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Better Together
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
When Rob Walker and his girlfriend relocated to New Orleans in 2000, Walker (a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine) started filling his friends' email inboxes with tales of adventures from his new home. Those stories--capturing the simple, everyday, and often unbelievable moments that regularly transpired in the Crescent City--are the basis for the fascinating Letters from New Orleans. Here, the author describes the parades and jazz funerals not as a tourist would see them, but from behind the scenes, amidst the personalities. Over the course of 20 or so vignettes, Walker finds himself in dive bars that should probably be condemned; bicycling through an improvised community park that happens to exist directly below a busy freeway overpass; and mulling the consequences of random, celebratory gun firings that appear to be a regular occurrence in New Orleans. Throughout, Walker is the perfect fly on the wall; he's equal parts journalist, anthropologist, and tour guide. He devotes his energy equally to the beautiful, the downtrodden, and the wacky, but these are clearly love letters to the unique people of New Orleans. Walker is, quite simply, infatuated with his adopted city. With the 2005 flooding of Hurricane Katrina happening just months after the publishing of this book, these pieces serve as even more poignant snapshots; some of Walker's favorite landmarks may be gone forever. With that in mind, the author is devoting the proceeds from this wonderful effort to Katrina victims. --Jason Verlinde
From Publishers Weekly
Walker, the New York Times Magazine's "Consumed" columnist, shares episodic vignettes of three years (2000–2003) spent in New Orleans. He takes in the usual (Mardi Gras, Carnival, a funeral, a gospel choir, Gennifer Flowers, Galatoire's, K-Doe) as a resident tourist, but his writer's perspective strays just enough off center to remain interesting. The streetcar named Desire long gone, Walker visits the history and tenants of the Desire projects. He pursues the blues standard "St. James Infirmary" through its recording history and around the world. He dons a skeleton costume and parades with one of the Carnival krewes. Not the meal at Galatoire's but the local uproar about a fired waiter gets his attention. Indeed, the quality that makes Walker's "modest series of stories about a place that means a lot to [him]" rewarding reading is his immersion in the local. Neighborhood bars, regional history, hometown notables and a dash of mayoral politics reign in the recurring presence of New Orleans' dominating event, Mardi Gras. Walker's book, "not a memoir, a history, or an exposé," won't help a tourist get around in New Orleans, but it will help him or her see beyond the tour guide's pointed finger. (July 20)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
See all Editorial Reviews
When Rob Walker and his girlfriend relocated to New Orleans in 2000, Walker (a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine) started filling his friends' email inboxes with tales of adventures from his new home. Those stories--capturing the simple, everyday, and often unbelievable moments that regularly transpired in the Crescent City--are the basis for the fascinating Letters from New Orleans. Here, the author describes the parades and jazz funerals not as a tourist would see them, but from behind the scenes, amidst the personalities. Over the course of 20 or so vignettes, Walker finds himself in dive bars that should probably be condemned; bicycling through an improvised community park that happens to exist directly below a busy freeway overpass; and mulling the consequences of random, celebratory gun firings that appear to be a regular occurrence in New Orleans. Throughout, Walker is the perfect fly on the wall; he's equal parts journalist, anthropologist, and tour guide. He devotes his energy equally to the beautiful, the downtrodden, and the wacky, but these are clearly love letters to the unique people of New Orleans. Walker is, quite simply, infatuated with his adopted city. With the 2005 flooding of Hurricane Katrina happening just months after the publishing of this book, these pieces serve as even more poignant snapshots; some of Walker's favorite landmarks may be gone forever. With that in mind, the author is devoting the proceeds from this wonderful effort to Katrina victims. --Jason Verlinde
From Publishers Weekly
Walker, the New York Times Magazine's "Consumed" columnist, shares episodic vignettes of three years (2000–2003) spent in New Orleans. He takes in the usual (Mardi Gras, Carnival, a funeral, a gospel choir, Gennifer Flowers, Galatoire's, K-Doe) as a resident tourist, but his writer's perspective strays just enough off center to remain interesting. The streetcar named Desire long gone, Walker visits the history and tenants of the Desire projects. He pursues the blues standard "St. James Infirmary" through its recording history and around the world. He dons a skeleton costume and parades with one of the Carnival krewes. Not the meal at Galatoire's but the local uproar about a fired waiter gets his attention. Indeed, the quality that makes Walker's "modest series of stories about a place that means a lot to [him]" rewarding reading is his immersion in the local. Neighborhood bars, regional history, hometown notables and a dash of mayoral politics reign in the recurring presence of New Orleans' dominating event, Mardi Gras. Walker's book, "not a memoir, a history, or an exposé," won't help a tourist get around in New Orleans, but it will help him or her see beyond the tour guide's pointed finger. (July 20)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
See all Editorial Reviews
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